As a non-vi user, I feel very excluded :( ^H means backspace guys. And probably the same type of CEO that wants to make money by not paying out affiliates
I don't think that's the answer to the backspace=^h question, but HJKL is precisely an artifact of the keyboard that vi was first used on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_Terminal_ADM3A.svg / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi#Creation - in addition to HJKL being labeled as the arrow keys on that keyboard, also note the far superior placement of escape and control where modern keyboards typically place tab and caps lock; this also made vi a lot more sensible.
(And of course that last bit is a whole topic unto itself; to this day, caps lock is the dumbest key on the whole keyboard to me - mostly useless, takes up prime real estate, and 100% worth remapping on every machine I control. But that's a rant for another day:])
Because the h-key is in the middle row of the keyboard, meaning relatively shorter keyboard distance needed to execute that common command, thereby saving typing time.
caret notation just maps all ASCII control characters to ^ + letter, many of which do not always have keys. "Backspace" is 0x08 = 8th letter is H = ^H
it's also not just used as an input, but also what a terminal that can't do or doesn't understand a backspace as "delete character, step to the left" prints instead.
But like I said, it's not just letters, if you use `cat -v` to show all non-printable characters in this notation, you'll also see things like "^@" for the 0x00 null byte and "^[" for the ESC. All of the terminal color-code control sequences start with ESC, so if you pipe colorized output to `cat -v`, you'll see a lot of "^[".
^H is the ASCII control character for backspace. It has nothing to do with vi, and everything to do with a terminal. It used to be common knowledge that when you press Backspace, sometimes ^H appears on your screen (if the program in question couldn't handle control characters natively). Naturally, in forum posts it started to have the meaning of "delete" for humorous purpose.
Its modern equivalent is HTML tag <del></del>, which also means "delete" due to the common knowledge of its meaning. One doesn't have to be a front-end developer to understand <del>, and one didn't have to be a vi user to understand ^H.
That genuinely sounds like he misunderstood the issue to be with prior untracked referrals rather than not paying out referrals properly attributed to him but "ineligible".
This made me think of [1] this discussion here about subway and their fake whole wheat bread. It looks like Subway was forced to change their recipe but honestly I don't have faith in any many companies. Instead of offering good food it always ends up "return to share holders" mode and the product turns to crap.
{1| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24646755
It was not too long ago that Ireland ruled that there was so much sugar in the Subway bread it was 'cake'. Sugar made up 10% of the weight of the flour.
Added (small) side-effect from this post, as a keto person who loves Patrick’s advice: now I know never to give the Kiss My Keto assholes a dime, via your site or anyone else’s.
Tough numbers to make work. A hundred referrals and 88 bucks owed is... not a life changing number. Far more interesting is the revenue inflection point, going from an ongoing relationship worth zero to one worth 700 bucks a year.
But... apparently still not worth keeping:
> I’ve since removed all mention of Kiss My Keto, as I no longer have any interest in helping them earn money, regardless of what they pay me.
To me, it seems like the real story here might be that someone is selling bread for a 20 percent markup. Or maybe they aren't, but have been able to make ends meet by stiffing referrals. The margins on groceries are typically small, which is borne out by Amazon's 1 percent comission rate for the Grocery category. If someone comes along offering to 20x your income, skepticism is in order.
You can formalize that skepticism with a multi-armed bandit algorithm. Basically, put affiliate commissions into the feedback loop, picking which affiliate links to use by expected value. But it may take a while with low click through volumes.
I learned an important thing over time: recurring payment services always pay much higher commissions. One time purchases pay very little, even for big ticket items.
A 3€ per month liability insurance might have a 40€ commission, while a 400€ product might have a 10€ commission.
The phrase "cancel culture" is such meaningless drivel. There are many valid reasons why we don't want to give a platform to certain people because of what they did in the past.
"This company is ripping me off, but I'll protect its identity because I feel like I owe it something" is plain misguided and a huge disfavor to other participants in the market.
Alec Mwali is a shady affiliate manager who has tried to get me to post fake reviews for companies he represented in the past. Not surprised to see his name show up in a post about shady affiliate business. (Documented my experience with him here: https://reviewsignal.com/blog/2016/04/22/dirty-slimy-shady-s...)
Looks like KMK just tried to cheat hoping that nobody would make much of a fuss over a hundred bucks or so. And they are probably right in enough cases to make it worth it. If occasionally somebody does make a fuss, they just pay up the hundred bucks and still aren't worse than before.
Except now they have enough negative publicity about documented shady practice that it will likely destroy their affiliate program. Honesty really is the best policy
> If they failed to pay, my plan was to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission and reach out to other affiliates suggesting they do the same.
Where do people get their info from to just go with a "time to contact the FTC"? If feels like the equivalent of people threatening they will contact the BBB.
Depending on the amount (that was $88 per the screenshot?), that is something you take to small claims court, you don't even need a lawyer for that.
> Where do people get their info from to just go with a "time to contact the FTC"? If feels like the equivalent of people threatening they will contact the BBB.
I'm well aware of how toothless and irrelevant BBB is these days. ("Yelp for old people"). Almost nobody visits BBB before making a decision, only after a bad experience. Given that, a business with a bad grade there probably doesn't feel much of a sting.
But I'm totally unfamiliar with FTC's power or purview. Is involving them on something like this a waste of time because of the dollar amount? I don't expect they would recover the money, or mediate a dispute. But I think the author is coming at it from the angle that the other party would rather not rack up complaints at all. Especially if they could get other affiliates to follow suit.
I work in telecom, and complaints to the Public Utilities Commission are treated seriously within my company (and in the wider industry AFAIK). We really do not want customers to file any. When a customer mentions the PUC at all, we take them seriously enough to get some more eyes on their problem.
My guess is that the author's checklist includes small claims as the next step after the FTC complaint. Or maybe they just stop at the FTC complaint and consider a lawsuit—even if small claims—to not be worth it for the amount involved.
> I work in telecom, and complaints to the Public Utilities Commission are treated seriously within my company (and in the wider industry AFAIK). We really do not want customers to file any. When a customer mentions the PUC at all, we take them seriously enough to get some more eyes on their problem.
The consumer protection reporters for the new channel hanging around the headquarters also tend to grab a lot of attention in my experience. Happened once or twice that I remember where it was drop everything and solve the problem before the report goes out.
Actually I do visit the BBB if I am dealing with a new and unknown merchant before making a purchase. I also do searches with the business and add the words dispute, ripoff and problems. It's amazing what you learn.
Now if you don't find anything that doesn't mean there won't be problems. But if you do it's like a flashing red light on the dashboard to back away.
If it’s a merchant, just use a credit card. Payment processors don’t like fraud, and it’s one phone call to report a disputed charge. Disputes come out of the merchants pocket and then their rates go up or they are dropped by the processor. You also benefit everyone else by finding and hurting the bad merchant.
I had quite a poor experience with this recently.
Found out that there was a recurring charge from a website I had no relation with whatsoever, upon reporting this to my bank the answers were:
- Contact the site (I had, got stonewalled)
- No we can’t block that
- Just block your card and ask for a new one
Ultimately I got things resolved and money was paid back by the site because of relentless emailing and keeping factual (like the article talks about) that resolved it.
Needless to say the bank wasn’t real helpful so “just use a credit card” doesn’t quite seem to work, at least in my experience.
(This was in NL btw, not US)
You shouldn't try to block transactions when something you never did shows up, you should report it as fraud. If they got your number, somebody else probably has it too. Trying to "block" probably got you put in the wrong pipeline.
I had a similar experience with a (quite popular but not google) website provider that I had a relationship with and had given them my CC. At some point my account credentials went invalid - I could not do a password recovery no matter what I tried. Since I could not log in, I could not cancel the subscription. I emailed them and got no response. I could not contact "customer service" because I had to log into the site in order to do that.
After two years(!) of charges (charged once a year) and no responses, I got fed up and contested the most recent charge on my CC. I was contacted via email the next day by a customer service representative who was pretty unhappy with the chargeback and threatened me with cancelling my account. Exactly what I wanted - problem solved!
Having recently tried to integrate the Walmart affiliate API from Impact.com I'm not surprised. These affiliate programs are a mess. Impact seems to be trying to make it cleaner but their own system is a mess.
Too bad as well, affiliate programs could be a much better way to monetize than advertising revenue.
How is there no better way to track conversions in a standard way by a third party? This whole win relies on the fact that the affiliate manager let out the real policy. She could have just said that there were no conversions, and the author would basically have no recourse?
this is the real question here. how is the state of affiliate marketing so bad that affiliates have to trust without any means of verification the very people inclined to scam them?
Yeah, that was my initial thought too, but thinking about it more, I understand why that doesn't exist.
Merchants are the ones paying the affiliate platforms, so the affiliate platforms don't have incentive to create features designed to increase power of the affiliates at the expense of the merchant.
Affiliates in this space don't seem to be very discriminating. The only communities I've found for keto affiliate marketers are the groups run by the merchants themselves, so it's not like they're searching for information about which merchants are honest or not. I think the general trend is to try a merchant, monitor how much they pay you, then move on if the dollar amount is too low.
Yeah, makes sense. It would be hard to gain initial traction and the business model can be tricky. But the merchants also of course get value from the affiliates, so once it catches on with affiliates, they could demand merchants to use this service for checkouts for trust and verification, if it is lightweight enough. Could just be javascript like google analytics or piwik.
It is a hell lots of work for 88 bucks. Amount of work spent writing emails, analyzing data, coming up with strategy - it comes down to pretty low hourly wage...
Is there no intermediary third party service which will allow advertisers and websites to register their arrangement and track conversions? Sounds like an obvious product idea. What am I missing?
This piece has so many red flags. I'm surprised and somewhat disappointed it landed at #1 on HN.
(1) Why was all of this work worth $88 in the first place? As a talented writer who is at least presumably familiar with software engineering, he surely could have earned that money faster by other means.
(2) Why does he continue to work with merchants he himself describes as unscrupulous, in _affiliate marketing_?
My hunch is that he wrote this article specifically to appeal to the HN crowd (see patio11 quotes) in an attempt to get additional commissions from driving more sales to a vendor _he himself_ describes as unscrupulous.
The idea is to demonstrate a professional method for communicating with companies that are incompetent or otherwise untrustworthy. The amount of money involved and the business practices of the company with whom he is communicating is not strictly relevant.
It's a Form of hacking a company's processes from outside. Basically you punch through to the enterprise layer of communication and get treated better accordingly.
I’ve worked for 50 person companies, and 250k person companies. I’ve found that, (barring outliers), most CEOs, especially of startups, are very interested in the perspective of ‘Joe customer’, if shared in earnest. When you think about it, they’ve placed many layers of abstraction between themselves and their customers for the sake of the larger perspective. But CEOs are also people, and customers (of someone) themselves. And are therefore interested in the individual satisfaction of their customers/partners, to a point.
> My hunch is that he wrote this article specifically to appeal to the HN crowd (see patio11 quotes) in an attempt to get additional commissions from driving more sales to a vendor _he himself_ describes as unscrupulous.
He actually sells a course on it! - Hit the Front Page of Hacker News [0]
Michael is a pretty frequent contributor to HN. In fact so much that his latest project is an ebook specifically about how to get on the front page of HN.
He has spent a few years building small one man startup type projects. His blog is quite obviously a way of generating initial interest in these projects.
He specifically notes that he has ended all relationship the affiliate so your baseless conspiracy theory is unnecessary.
Geez. This article was hard to follow but... it sounds like the merchant is really screwing up. My SaaS business gets most of our users via an affiliate program, and many years ago I worked in porn where nearly all of our users from an affiliate program.
The #1 rule of affiliate programs is to treat affiliates like royalty. Or more accurately - business partners. Be clear about what you offer, be generous, and always resolve reasonable misunderstandings in their favor. A single good affiliate can make your business. A bad reputation will destroy it.
There are third party affiliate software systems that can help with trust, but they are all terrible. Nothing substitutes for just being trustworthy. This post is probably going to be top news in the "keto affiliate community" (which, even without checking, I already know to be a thing) and it will be a problem.
Is there a good way to contact an online business directly and say "It seems you pay a 20% affiliate fee. I would like a 20% discount?" Amazon kinda does this with smile and donations, even though I don't use amazon anymore.
I go out of my way, with link strippers, cookie removers, adblockers, to the point of often manually copy and pasting links into a private window if necessary, to avoid affiliate links. When I do this I usually feel like I'm supporting the online store, but there are some cases (e.g. I'm looking for an oversized mattress) where I know the whole industry is corrupt and I just want to pay as little rent as possible.
If you're in the UK, then you can use Topcashback [1] or Quidco [2]. Both of these links are affiliate links too, so if you start receiving cashback then I'll get £20.
With both of these services, you get to collect the affiliate fee. Some things like insurance are huge and you can easily get £100 for them, most are much smaller.
Keep in mind though that affiliate programs are not necessarily sleazy. By default nobody knows about your product. Some of our partners have been making tutorials in other languages and building API integrations into their products. They deserve the money we send them.
They may not be "sleazy" but they incentivize reviews/referrals/recommendations based on what the affiliate gets rather based on what product is the best. This pollutes the entired internet, making it significantly harder to find what you want as a consumer. On the whole, affiliate programs are a net negative for society and anyone taking part in them show reconsider their ethics.
You can say the exact same thing about all forms of marketing. By your logic, companies should never be allowed to advertise. Incumbents would love that.
Affiliate systems are the marketing equivalent of gig work. The quality of both product and affiliate are quite variable, but a good product and good affiliate are a strong net positive for society. Again, to use my case as an example, we have API integrations that we wouldn't have otherwise had and video tutorials in languages that we don't speak. Our customers love our product, I'm not ashamed to reward them for talking about it.
If you think every product should sell itself by 100% organic word of mouth... well, that's the rare exception, not the rule. If you're trying to build a business this way, you're in for a rough time.
The affiliate fee is a payment for someone who did the work of marketing the product and finding new clients that would otherwise be inaccessible.
You didn’t do any of that. You are just a customer at best and don’t provide any additional value on top of the money you pay for the product. Charging less then is just the company shorting itself for a single customer.
It's also effectively defrauding whomever provided the affiliate link. I'm not claiming that it's legal fraud, but it's a mild ethical lapse. They did their job of marketing the product effectively enough that the parent was motivated to buy, and then the parent cheated them out of their reward. It's petty.
The only thing the merchant cares about is CAC. If a customer walks in on their own, and they can acquire their business for less than the affiliate fee, then why not?
If some affiliate is actually doing the work of obtaining the customer to earn the fee, but then the customer has an economic incentive to strip the affiliate attribution to get the fee for themselves, then the affiliate isn’t getting paid. Maybe they’ll recommend another product instead, which doesn’t incentivize users to break the affiliate link.
That's one view. But my view is that affiliate links have created a massive race to the bottom, polluting search results and creating a new style of prose optimized for inserting key words and links.
I may not be able to stop that, but I certainly don't want to support it.
Yeah, one of the major issues with running an affiliate program is that there's a real risk that they wind up finding ways to claim your regular customers as theirs. You don't gain anything from such transactions, but they do.
The incentives of affiliates and principals aren't as fully aligned as might be hoped.
20% is rarely 20%. Most affilates have to reach a minimum and 90% never do. The small % who do are worth the 20%.
You trying to cut them out. I don't think it's in the sites best interest to offer people like you (cookie killers),a discount. If the affilates find out and they feel cheated they will move on.
Remember the affilate never gives one person at 20% (if they do they never hit their minimum) they give dozen/hundreds/thousands of customers.
That’s often what’s said, but the reality is different. It’s vastly easier for someone to get in between a future customer and a sale than it is to generate a new customer. Which is why affiliate programs are so frequently canceled without ill effect.
EX: Grubhub chnaginging Yelp phone numbers to get an affiliate commission on people looking up a restaurants phone number.
Do you use any of this affiliate 3rd party software yourself or did you roll your own solution? I'd like to make an affiliate sales program for my SaaS too, but it's hard to figure out where to start. I don't want to invest a lot of time integrating with X if nobody uses X, but I also don't want to invest a lot of time in rolling my own if everyone expects you to be using X.
Hey! I just went through the exact same thing for https://Sunboxlabs.com - shareasale et al have high up-fronts or monthlies and their own integration cost. I know people are gonna tell me it’s not worth half a day of engineering/debugging, but this is what I did for a roll-your-own affiliate mvp: write a ten line script to check the search params and set them as local storage or cookie. On checkout pass that cookie through to PayPal. Done!
Obviously I’m not getting the exposure of shareasale, impact, etc from being on their platform, but I can still sign up for them once I’ve validated that affiliate works for high ticket item hardware.
Ok, just going to ask everyone on this comment thread: would you be willing to test a system I have that is a super lightweight affiliate platform for startups?
I've been in the digital and affiliate space for well over a decade and have run programs from the tiny to the massive. Platforms like Impact, SAS and others are great, but if you're looking to get started and don't want to break the bank, let me know. It isn't a business, just a super simple platform for running a program that I built for my own use and could easily be used by others.
Sounds tempting. I was actually building one from scratch for my own business [0], but it's out of necessity rather than pleasure. Please get in touch!
We wrote our own, but that's because of the nature of our business and our program. YMMV.
If you're trying to get professional affiliates to market your business, sure, use third party software. Most the affiliates know the systems already and have some level of trust in it. Plus the software will provide analytics, payouts to various countries, tax guidance, etc.
Our program is primarily a referral program for existing customers. There's no separate affiliate account and credits automatically offset the fees we charge. Plus I like Stripe and don't want a bunch of third-party PHP crapware invading our already complex billing system. DIY was really the only option.
The things that make our customers want to refer others are not necessarily what will work for anyone else. Our current referral system would never fly with the porn affiliates, but also an impersonal "make $ fast!" affiliate system would never resonate with our customers.
A basic referral tracking system is super easy. Give users links they can share; clicking on the link puts a value in local storage; pass that value along with signups. Offer something meaningful to new customers who come in through a referral (for us, it's a discounted first month). If you're just trying to increase word of mouth spread, that's enough to get started.
Agree! Like a Judge I was thinking: obviously there is a payment dispute since otherwise why would I be reading pleadings? But where in hell does it say what IT is?
The whole long story behind the dispute may be interesting for the writer of the story, but not in general. And those with long history, or institutional history by now the N+1th version of yet another dispute is not inherently interesting.
What is interesting is the OP's link may have discovered new area in the solution space. So please talk about that!
I would love to get into the porn business, how do I go about this? To clarify, not as a performer or cameraman but I’m not sure what other roles are available.
Yes once a user leaves your site, it is pretty hard to know what happens on the affiliate site - you just have to trust the system they use. You can look at trends and your previous experience, but it is hard to have any proof.
As they mentioned further down in the article, they later got access to data on how affiliate references were performing and used that to extrapolate over the 120 cases that were missing data.
I've never known an affiliate system to have independently verified stats. Whether you're an affiliate for a small business or Amazon, they control the stats and you just have to accept what they say they owe you.
He could've had someone test this directly, by clicking on the affiliate link and purchasing a product, ideally while recording their screen so there's hard evidence. Then if the company still claimed there were no conversions, he would know for a fact that they were lying.
I would like to second the recommendation for the referenced article by Patrick. Big kudos to patio11.
3 years back I had an issue go in my favor (for almost $2k) regarding a dispute with an auto body shop when I started asking them questions in a 'professional' manner (for documentation purposes) and questioning regarding their processes that they were following.
I used the article by Patrick as a template and and the auto body shop just folded on the case.
Given how much time you've wasted with this, my feeling is that overall you still lost. They owe you money for the time spent as well. Good on you for publishing this, but you should have mentioned their company name in the title, so that hopefully it show up in search engine results and this alerts others to not collaborate with them.
Passive income gets mentioned a lot here. He's collected over $100 for previous conversions and about $60 after that, and he'll keep collecting as long as the affiliate program runs. It's not a lot of money in general, but you don't start a keto blog with dreams of billions either.
$100 to billions is an unrealistic step, and an unfounded generalisation of the author's circumstances. in this day and age something as benign as an "influencer" mentioning the word "keto" could butterfly-ripple the author into an early retirement
I actually don't know what you mean. The post I responded to said that the money recovered was not enough compared to the time spent. My point is, the money is not a lot, but considering it's a low income blog anyway (there is another blog post about that) it's not too bad, especially in terms of future reward, for which he basically does not need to do anything.
> he'll keep collecting as long as the affiliate program runs
As mentioned in the post, he has cut the affiliate program off. And given that he is naming & shaming them in the blog, and even after getting posted to HN, I think that relationship has soured.
I looked at it the other way around. For a dispute of $88, to hang this company out to dry on Hacker News (they didn't know that would happen specifically, but still it was a public post), I didn't find very professional. You know, for all that talk about acting as a professional. Oh, well, acting...
If I can rip off 3000 people a year for $88, that's a pretty good living. I wouldn't even have to feel bad about it, because anybody who would complain is unprofessional.
I understand the fact that the author took the matter in his own hands and claimed what he was owed but this article is just another proof that instead of doing our jobs and spending our time more productively, we always need to play the "lawyer" and the "detective" because some people/company always abuse their position of power. The author did manage to get his money, but at the same time pointed them a flaw (the affiliation page) in their little scheme, which means that he didn't help protect anyone else that wants to start an affiliation with them. And yes, I understand that this is "how the world works" but still, I always get bothered by this kind of behavior. Maybe an alternative maybe, would have been to stood up by just ending the partnership and finding another company that treats its affiliations with more respect AND post the article in order for others to read the bad experience he had.
In another country, like the one I now live in, this would be a job for law enforcement.
You'd just hand over your files to some branch of the government, and in a surprisingly short amount of time, you'd get some money, but also, the site would stop cheating people.
Except that this rarely happens here, because companies know that law enforcement cares about systematic scams.
They might try to cheat you once, to see if you're a sucker, but if you put up any fuss, they'll give you the money.
Based on the fact that I have also lived there, and looking at his comment history, I don’t think you can take this comment as being entirely accurate.
Unfortunately the law does not work that well in all countries. It might take years even for a small dispute and they know that in most cases and they take advantage of it. The important thing here, as you mentioned, is for the company to be in check by the law or else they will just take advantage of every situation, but of course. The law is mostly slow and never helpful unless you spend a lot of money in lawyers.
I've probably had 10 such cases in the last 5 years: speeding tickets from countries I have not even driven to, medical services double-billed to both my insurance and credit card, ... all $100-300 range.
I'm confident I could probably recover most, but at this amount, I just don't want to deal with it. It's one of those cases where I wish I had a personal assistant. It makes me think there's room for a "consumer debt collector" service with a revenue share model.
They do exist but only for certain niches. For example in the case of the european air passenger rights. My partner missed a connection flight by a few minutes and had to wait overnight. On the next day she had to take another two stop flight instead of a direct flight. They gave her a hotel, a taxi and a little voucher for food but this wasn’t enough according to her rights.
There are various only services who go to court for you and will get as much money as they can. You go to their website, enter your flight, they calculate the probability that it was the airlines fault , they show you what you maybe can expect, you give them the permission and then they do everything else. The company takes something like 25% comission and that‘s it. It takes a few minutes. In the end she payed 100-200€ for the return flight and got something like 350€ back via the company.
Made me think if one could find the most unreliable flights, with the worst delay in case of a delay and fly them profitably by going to court all the time.
>It makes me think there's room for a "consumer debt collector" service with a revenue share model.
There was a company called Service that kind of did this. They launched around 2015. You would tell them about a customer service dispute you were having, and they would call the business on your behalf and recover the money you were owed. I used them several times, and they were able to recover money for me without me having to do much except give them the details.
It looked like they had a few million in VC money to blow through because it was free, and there were no minimums on the dispute amount, so it definitely couldn't last. In Feb 2017, they added a 30% commission on recovered money,[0] and then later that year, they pivoted to focus exclusively on disputes with airlines,[1] which it looks like they're still doing.[2]
> Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t, but I always find it to be the least stressful way of addressing disputes.
This make it very valuable to me. Resolving disputes can quickly become stressful, especially when as an engineer you rarely have to do so with customers.
The blog post he mentions Identity Theft, Credit Reports and You is a really good read that has surfaced on HN a couple times. If you haven’t read it, you should. The notion of simply being an organised professional being the most intimidating thing to bureaucracies is very true in my experience.
When I moved to Europe, I was VERY surprised to say the least that this doesn’t apply at all here.
The attitude is more like “you should feel lucky we let you give us your money and purchase something from us. Now fuck off.”
I tried the professional attitude, I tried threatening legal action (I have legal insurance that would pay an obscene amount of lawyer fees if it came to that), I have tried the angry consumer, I have tried to complain to the regulator... None of that worked. Most of the time, they basically say something like “kiss my ass”
I don’t know how to deal with EU companies. I was always getting what I wanted in North America by using the organized professional method. I’m at a complete loss in Europe. Any advice?
This becomes very time consuming, very fast. Even if the insurance pays the lawyers fees, I still have to setup an apointment, explain the situation again, give the documents, etc.
It's always "small" amounts like 50-500$, i.e. amounts that it sucks throwing out the window but that aren't big enough to justify sinking even more time in chasing.
I also don't believe this can be the only way. Most people don't have legal insurance and wouldn't pay a lawyer the equivalent of 1000$ for a dispute like that.
I'm talking every day stuff: a cellphone bill with an error on it (in the company's favour, always), or an Ikea piece of furniture that was delivered broken (but the package looked fine), or a voucher you were promised if you signed up for a particular health insurance plan and when it's time to get the voucher you're not eligible anymore... That kind of stuff.
I live in Switzerland. A lot of stuff is paid cash at the store, with a debit card, or as a bill that you receive at home later. There is no credit card involved in the transaction.
I've also tried charging back on my Swiss card once... What a mission. I was treated the same way any other store treats me: download this PDF, print it out, fill it in (5 pages), send it in the mail, wait 3 weeks, never hear back.
Compared to my North American cards: one phone call and the dispute is open. Wait a month and get the credit. End of story.
Or for cell phone issues in NA: try calling once, get nowhere, tell the regulator with time of call and name of the person, a week later get a call from the "VIP" service at the telco who will basically give me whatever I want to make the complaint go away.
There are no regulators with that kind of power that I know of here. All of the "regulators" have no teeth, and so the businesses don't fear them.
This might explain it - Switzerland is in Europe, but not part of EU. At least in EU consumer has lots of rights and is pretty well protected. I have no idea how that is in Switzerland (though what you report surprises me). That said, legal action in Europe... good luck. :)
If this happens to you a lot, go for a credit card. "Chargeback" works worldwide (afaik) and it puts you in the position of power, where merchant has to prove that you are in the wrong instead of the other way around. Simple solution and no real drawback.
EDIT: ...and change your CC company. They seem incompetent.
CC chargebacks in Germany can be a hassle. Most people get their CC through their bank, and have to submit chargebacks through their banks. Half of the banks do straightforward and simple chargebacks, half want you to do a ritual dance like the swiss example and treat you like you want to rip off someone.
Also, consumer protection is nice on paper, but especially for smaller amounts of money or not-so-clear cases it doesn't work well. You still have to get a lawyer and go to court. Also, since there are no class-action suits US-style, where companies seem to be somewhat afraid of getting sued, in Europe they rely on the statistics of most people being too lazy to sue, because everyone has to sue one-by-one for themselves only. Only rarely, for high-profile stuff, consumer protection offices get involved with class-style (but fairly toothless usually) suits.
What can help in Switzerland (and potentially in other countries in Europe) is to complain through a consumer protection office. SRF has a TV and radio show (Kassensturz/Espresso) where they regularly solve consumer issues by threatening bad publicity.
Another option that can work is to send a bill for the owed amount and if they fail to respond start the process of debt collection (Betreibung). It’s a pain and doesn’t work well for people who actually cannot pay, but for regular businesses where you’re stuck somewhere in their bureaucracy it’s a way to force them to respond to your claims that’s a bit less involved than straight-out suing them.
For smaller amounts there is usually an small claims court or ombudsman kind of framework in most jurisdictions , they rarely require lawyers, many times the company either fails to show up and you can get a default judgment , or they will settle out of court as the cost of the process is greater than the amount you are asking for.
This still requires some amount of time from you and the small filing fees, the way I would calculate is whether I can earn more in that half day I spend in court and is my documented evidence clear and simple enough that i have an high probability of success.
The judges in such courts are usually impatient - they have ton of cases in their the docket, concise and simple presentation of facts and no opinions etc goes a long way, they also know you are not a lawyer so there is always some latitude for the plaintiff that usually you don't find in other places
Also your ability to sue in small claims court depends on jurisdiction, i.e. if you have any forced arbitration clauses in your contract and whether the jurisdiction has exceptions for small claims despite such clauses etc.
Writing a letter yourself works. In my experience in the UK anyway.
In the past I've had disputes where I've made tens of phone calls to customer support people who cannot solve the problem but pretend they will. Every call is groundhog day.
Now, if the problem isn't solved by the first phone call I write a letter.
A short paragraph (one or two sentences) describing what happened and why it is a problem. A short paragraph describing what I want. Then all the tedious detail. And conclude by restating the problem and what I want. No threats.
It depends on the country, I guess? In Romania the professional attitude combined with mentioning the regulator (or filling a complaint to the regulator) works pretty well for consumer goods.
Europe is a big place, with very different legal systems and business customs. It’s true that businesses tend to be less customer-focused (euphemism), but depending on the specific country there may be relatively easy redress.
Use your US CC, make charge-backs. Big surprise once for Wizz Air :-)
In general: You have to find a weak spot.
I have problems with a scam (ongoing) in an East European EU country and I have been trying to get the authorities for 6 months to act. Even hiring a lawyer has been extraordinary difficult. Most don't reply Emails, others charge exorbitant fees, our last lawyer is MIA so we are trying now with a lawyer that is listed on an embassy website. We are talking here about a loss of a mid 5 figure sum.
After nothing worked, I listened to the advice of a local friend and started to expose people from the government/police that do not act online. Very bold, very nasty, very below the waistline. But now it looks like I finally bombed them to the negotiation table. :-)
I'm in the UK, and made my first ever charge back a couple of months back, after Ryanair refused to refund a flight that was cancelled due to corona virus (we'd booked it before the pandemic started). I'd paid with my CC (a UK card; not sure why it would be any different with a US CC?). I forget the exact sum, but it was something like £1,500.
Ryanair completely took the piss - they were very clearly trying to hold on to everyone's money for the duration, and ignored communications or offered ridiculous, short-lived credit notes in lieu of a refund. Several months passed like this.
Eventually I read up on how charge backs worked and called my card provider. They sent a form, and within a couple of weeks, the money was back in my account - the whole process was really straightforward, and I fully recommend using it if a vendor is outright refusing to uphold their side of the bargain.
In my experience charge backs are not so common in mainland Europe. A US CC issuer (and I am a customer since 18 years with the same card) can be much more aggressive about this. I think Wizz air has never dealt with an US CC :-)
Nevertheless I don't abuse this. I only request a charge back if I assume I also would win a lawsuit. But nobody has ever challenged one of my charge backs in court.
> In my experience charge backs are not so common in mainland Europe
Definitely agree. I'm pushing 40, and this is the first time I've done it. When I talked with friends and colleagues about this (from in the UK, but also from around Europe), I don't think a single person even knew what chargebacks were.
But I don't think I've ever once been in this kind of situation where my hand was forced - companies in Europe generally do the right thing, or at least behave within the boundaries of the law.
They aren't that likely to lose each customer. Ryanair targets cheap flights, their customers are those who discriminate on price. In this instance there is even an externality to point to, shifting the blame - even implicitly.
It also has to be considered that shrinking their market share is viable if it allows the company to survive.
Depending where the customer lives and wants to go, Ryanair can easily be 2-12 hours faster than the alternatives.
Especially in Eastern Europe, they might be the only airline with direct flights between smaller cities and Western Europe[1]. There's no way I'm choosing Lufthansa and changing flights in Munich if I can go direct with Ryanair and save 3+ hours.
I've wondered if I show up as this type of customer to Ryanair, since there have been a couple of times when it's been within their terms for them to charge me (e.g. slightly overweight luggage, lost boarding pass) and they haven't.
> their customers are those who discriminate on price
Not only price. We've flown previously with Ryanair numerous times, and I don't think price was ever the deciding factor - they simply fly to a lot of European destinations, so for us it's meant shorter routes.
They've completely lost my trust after this debacle though - their illegal behaviour had been utterly shameful, and I'll go out of my way not to use them in future.
Similar dance with Qantas, although we didn't have to use a chargeback. But after several months, we finally got them on the phone, and they said "we'll refund. it may take X days". X+30 days later we had no movement, called again. and they said there was no record, and then offered to refund - but only a partial amount (they weren't seeing extra fee charges on their end). Too much back and forth, but over 8 months after booking, and close to 4 months of calls and waiting, we got refunded, without having to file a chargeback.
Don't be so bloody rude, why on earth would I make up something like this?
I sent numerous emails, filled in maybe 6 forms, and multiple times had their understaffed online chat system open for up to 8 hours trying to speak to someone - for all the good it did when they answered.
Here in the UK, at the start, yes, Ryanair asked you to fill in a form, and said they would issue refunds within 14 days. I, like several thousand of others, duely filled in the form - only for Ryanair to change their tune a couple of weeks later. My guess was they'd sought legal advice, and found some loophole they thought would allow them to get away with it.
They went several weeks at a time with no general customer communications, and weren't replying to emails - on the rare occasions they did, it was to say they'd process refunds "later". Some weeks later, they sent out a general customer email, saying they'd only be issuing (short-lived!) credit notes instead of refunds, and anyone who declined would have to apply again, and would then have to wait until the pandemic was over for a refund. This whole (illegal!) debacle was very widely reported in the British media.
In my experience, this has stopped working so well in the last few years with companies tending to call customers' bluffs.
In most cases the best solution is: stop giving them money and go to the competitor.
Don't threaten legal action unless you already plan to follow it through: companies know this is unlikely to be followed up and will stonewall you.
If the industry has an ineffective regulator/ombudsman then going to a competitor might not help. In that case, I'd write a polite letter to your national member of parliament. (They are more likely to make this go away by fixing your personal problem, not instigating industry changes, so write with that in mind)
Don't threaten legal action unless you already plan to follow it through: companies know this is unlikely to be followed up and will stonewall you.
You actually do have to follow through if you're going to play that game. Otherwise almost everyone is just going to call your bluff, and I'm reasonably sure CS reps are now being actively trained to do so immediately at many companies. For example, any implication that you'd like to close an account or cancel an order will just be met with "I can do that for you immediately if you like", and if you don't take them up on it then they know you're not serious and you've lost any sort of credibility or leverage you might have had.
So, actually follow through. In the UK, suppose you have a legitimate grievance but get messed around by customer services, who may of course be incentivised to do exactly that. You may get better results by desisting from dealing with CS reps and instead sending a letter with verified delivery to the company's registered address. Clearly set out your grievance, what you would like them to do about it, and a reasonable amount of time you will allow for that to happen. Also include everything necessary for it to constitute a letter before action, which is the first step to a formal small claims action here, and possibly give a simple, objective statement in your letter that unfortunately if the matter is not resolved amicably by your stated deadline then you will proceed with that action.
IME, at that point your case may well be transferred to someone who actually knows the law and will be able to see if they have actually broken it or have obligations under it. And if they do, they'll know that it's in their best interests to resolve the matter quickly and agreeably if possible, and you may well get a response proposing some reasonable resolution (or saying that they'll stop chasing you if they've been hassling you after making a mistake).
If they don't do that, then actually bring the small claims action. This is designed to be accessible to normal people without requiring big expenses and professional lawyers. A lot of companies will apparently just not show up and let you win by default in that case, and you'll get some reasonable compensation for whatever wrong they've done to you. And if they do show up and you have a reasonable grievance, there's still a fair chance you'll win reasonable compensation accordingly.
Small claims can work with some companies, but others simply laugh at County Court Judgements.
The hard part isn't winning - which is easy if you have even a minimally credible case - it's enforcement.
If the company ignores the judgement you have to go back to court to get an enforcement order. And then you'll have to engage a collections company and/or a bailiff. And if they seize goods to the value of because they can't extract a payment, you won't be paid until the goods are auctioned off.
To a company turning over millions, a one-off claim for a few hundred is barely worth noticing. From their POV you're barely a flea bite, and of course most people will give up on a claim without much of a fight. So naturally they're going to try that first.
The other point is that most people you deal with don't care either way. They'll follow the company script, because the outcome - and your inconvenience - mean nothing to them.
I don't know. Having seen Small Claims Court in person, there were companies suing people and people suing companies. And all the companies showed up.
As for enforcement, here, you're allowed to sell the debt the company owes you to collectors, and this pays 10% interest a year--not bad compared to a checking account. You can demand they show up in court again and answer to the judge why they haven't paid, and when they will, you can lay claim to rent and assets, et cetera. The court won't do that for you, but it very much does want to help legitimately harmed parties settle their score.
Small claims can work with some companies, but others simply laugh at County Court Judgements.
Then once again you just have to actually follow through. Obviously a business can't just decide to ignore a court ruling against it and get away with it if you take steps to enforce. And if you don't want to, there are professional organisations who are experts in the relevant law and will act as your agent and take enforcement action of the appropriate type for your case.
The US system is based on liability and the threat of legal action. The European system is based on their regulatory framework. If you have a complaint that is clearly managed within that framework (my laundry machine spontaneously broke down within the statutory warranty period) they'll comply, else, yeah, good luck. I moved in the other direction (to the US) and I'm amazed when my wife gets a $50 little blender replaced at Macy's after we worked it to its limits for three or four years. For all the complaining about how things aren't how they used to be anymore, the US is great on customer service.
Sometimes the regulatory route works in the US. We had our main business phone line go down and Verizon customer service basically shrugged their shoulders and said there was nothing they could do and no way to escalate. One call to the state regulator and not only did they fix the phone line within a couple hours, they begged us to tell them what they could do to make the regulatory complaint go away. We told them we'd like access to FIOS but had always been told fiber wasn't on our street and wasn't going to be. Three weeks later, fiber was run down the entire street and we were hooked up to gigabit internet. That roll out can't have been cheap for them.
It was almost certainly the state public utilities commission PUC, which depending on the state may have a different acronym (PSC is also common). These regulate telecom, water, and energy companies including ESCOs (companies that in theory reduce your energy bill by charging you a different rate than the local monopoly). For companies regulated this way, PSC complaints are extremely effective.
When I was a youngster growing up with dialup internet we had a problem: when it rained, static filled the line and the internet died.
The repair tech sympathetically said that he was trying, but their policy at the time said the interference was at acceptable levels for voice and he wasn’t able to convince his management to trace the problem upstream and replace the line to fix one rural customer’s service.
On his fourth trip out he slipped dad a post it note with a phone number. It was the state public utility commission. My dad called on Thursday.
That Saturday, the district manager knocks on our door. He informs us of how sorry the entire Bell family is for the trouble we’ve had, that they have teams tracing lines from the central office to our house and will have the problem identified and fixed by Sunday, and that we will receive a rather significant discount to our bill over the next year to help “make it right”. His only ask was that we call the PSC and let them know if AT&T had solved the problem to our satisfaction.
Frankly, I'm not sure how this is customer service so much as either:
- A promised warranty being fulfilled
- A battle of attrition until Macy's gave in
I'm sure there are more nuanced options also but I'm not going to take the time to guess each one as frankly I'm just not quite sure what the definition of Customer Service should be from this post. Should we focus on "The device was used to its limits and still replaced"? That Macy's actually honored a guarantee?
I have a very dour view on customer service since my particular line of work is B2B with IT professionals and it's rarely a pleasant experience with many regions, with the US (yes, nationally) and the UK (yes, basically all of it) being some of the most challenging customers to deal with simply because of their expectations and definitions of Customer Service.
The majority of the time they're not even aware of the terms of their support contract and constantly are pushing the boundaries of support or from the get-go are just far beyond anything that should be reasonably expected, and the amount of complaining and legal threats really takes an emotional toll on my team (since a lot of them do really want to help).
With the EU clients, the same boundary pushing happens, but I find there's usually much more of an honesty about it. Usually one of three things comes from our EU clients:
- The client openly admits they know we don't provide support for said thing, but they really have no other source for help
- The client honestly tells they had no idea we didn't provide support for such things, and humbly asks if there's anything we can offer to help out
- The client honestly had no idea we didn't provide support for such things, and closes out the case of their own volition
I'm not sure that I can say which result has the best "customer experience" for my clients, as in each case they don't get what they expected from the case they open. US/UK clients tend to add a 4th option:
- The client doesn't care what is/is not supported, they want a resolution
I can easily say which of the 4 outcomes is the most time consuming and emotionally draining for everyone involved.
I think that the idea of service is really misunderstood; service workers are not slaves, and while management __should__ work to make them do their job and honor the business' obligations, management also needs to help clearly define the boundaries of such obligations and explain how to gracefully deescalate situations that toe or exceed these boundaries.
Had an experience like this with Lufthansa where it owed me ~600 euros for a cancelled flight. Someone messed up over there and tagged my compensation as delivered, but no money had actually arrived in my bank account. I kept track of the number of emails it took to solve this: >30, 1-2 every week. That's only from me, double that for the total.
The customer service was simply repeating the same thing over and over: accounting says the money was sent. What aggravated the issue, was that basicly every email was replied by a different customer service agent. I pointed out to them that according to SEPA regulations it is the sender's responsibility to ensure that the funds reach the recipient, but they were ignoring it. I didn't think to ask to be forwarded to the legal compliance office. I did take legal action, sort of, by complaining through the EU out-of-court dispute resolution platform, but didn't receive any response through the platform (might have helped anyway, don't know).
What helped resolve it, was looking up SEPA regulations (because until then I was saying "this is your responsibility", they were replying "no it's not"), endurance, and a sense of humour.
When you have a problem you make a single contact to their customer service line setting out what the problem is, and asking for their advice about what needs to happen for it to be fixed. Make a recording of this and keep details of the date and time and the name of the person you speak to.
If that doesn't fix the problem you then make use of their complaints process. This is hard because they usually hide it away somewhere. But they all have one. It's best to do this using real letters in the post, because you might need this paperwork later. Grind through it until you get a final answer.
If that didn't fix it you have a choice. For regulated industries you can go to the regulator for advice. Or you can start a legal process.
For the regulator send a letter using whatever weird webform they use. Make sure you mention that you've already exhausted the company's own dispute resolution process. Some regulators are better than others - often you won't get much satisfaction from regulators.
Send a letter before action. This describes what went wrong and what you want them to do to put it right. Give them the timeline of how you've tried to fix it. Give them reasonable time limits to fix it. Then issue small claims proceedings.
Probably depends a lot on the country, the type of business and the issue you have.
Just the other day there was judgment in a case against Vodafone (a mobile carrier) where callcenters faked the voices on the call to get a provision and the customer should pay for something he never wanted. If you live in Germany, the Verbraucherzentrale (consumer advice centre) can help you resolve issues like this.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 285 ms ] threadHaving a representative admit to violating their own policy/terms in writing is sort of a slam dunk.
The principle still applies though, good advice afaict.
How did the CEO write this and not immediately ^H^H^H it? Could he really not think of a better phrasing than "your conversions"?
(And of course that last bit is a whole topic unto itself; to this day, caps lock is the dumbest key on the whole keyboard to me - mostly useless, takes up prime real estate, and 100% worth remapping on every machine I control. But that's a rant for another day:])
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII#Control_code_chart
it's also not just used as an input, but also what a terminal that can't do or doesn't understand a backspace as "delete character, step to the left" prints instead.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_character
Its modern equivalent is HTML tag <del></del>, which also means "delete" due to the common knowledge of its meaning. One doesn't have to be a front-end developer to understand <del>, and one didn't have to be a vi user to understand ^H.
Edit: extra carbs I mean. Getting my diets confused here.
It seems their chicken is a chicken-soy-mix. At least taste and texture are that way
https://www.npr.org/2020/10/01/919189045/for-subway-a-ruling...
But... apparently still not worth keeping:
> I’ve since removed all mention of Kiss My Keto, as I no longer have any interest in helping them earn money, regardless of what they pay me.
To me, it seems like the real story here might be that someone is selling bread for a 20 percent markup. Or maybe they aren't, but have been able to make ends meet by stiffing referrals. The margins on groceries are typically small, which is borne out by Amazon's 1 percent comission rate for the Grocery category. If someone comes along offering to 20x your income, skepticism is in order.
You can formalize that skepticism with a multi-armed bandit algorithm. Basically, put affiliate commissions into the feedback loop, picking which affiliate links to use by expected value. But it may take a while with low click through volumes.
A 3€ per month liability insurance might have a 40€ commission, while a 400€ product might have a 10€ commission.
They currently advertise a discounted 4 bread pack for only $39.99 . I feel the markup is not exactly 20%.
edit: e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25322456
Where do people get their info from to just go with a "time to contact the FTC"? If feels like the equivalent of people threatening they will contact the BBB.
Depending on the amount (that was $88 per the screenshot?), that is something you take to small claims court, you don't even need a lawyer for that.
I'm well aware of how toothless and irrelevant BBB is these days. ("Yelp for old people"). Almost nobody visits BBB before making a decision, only after a bad experience. Given that, a business with a bad grade there probably doesn't feel much of a sting.
But I'm totally unfamiliar with FTC's power or purview. Is involving them on something like this a waste of time because of the dollar amount? I don't expect they would recover the money, or mediate a dispute. But I think the author is coming at it from the angle that the other party would rather not rack up complaints at all. Especially if they could get other affiliates to follow suit.
I work in telecom, and complaints to the Public Utilities Commission are treated seriously within my company (and in the wider industry AFAIK). We really do not want customers to file any. When a customer mentions the PUC at all, we take them seriously enough to get some more eyes on their problem.
My guess is that the author's checklist includes small claims as the next step after the FTC complaint. Or maybe they just stop at the FTC complaint and consider a lawsuit—even if small claims—to not be worth it for the amount involved.
The consumer protection reporters for the new channel hanging around the headquarters also tend to grab a lot of attention in my experience. Happened once or twice that I remember where it was drop everything and solve the problem before the report goes out.
Now if you don't find anything that doesn't mean there won't be problems. But if you do it's like a flashing red light on the dashboard to back away.
Ultimately I got things resolved and money was paid back by the site because of relentless emailing and keeping factual (like the article talks about) that resolved it. Needless to say the bank wasn’t real helpful so “just use a credit card” doesn’t quite seem to work, at least in my experience. (This was in NL btw, not US)
You shouldn't try to block transactions when something you never did shows up, you should report it as fraud. If they got your number, somebody else probably has it too. Trying to "block" probably got you put in the wrong pipeline.
I had a similar experience with a (quite popular but not google) website provider that I had a relationship with and had given them my CC. At some point my account credentials went invalid - I could not do a password recovery no matter what I tried. Since I could not log in, I could not cancel the subscription. I emailed them and got no response. I could not contact "customer service" because I had to log into the site in order to do that.
After two years(!) of charges (charged once a year) and no responses, I got fed up and contested the most recent charge on my CC. I was contacted via email the next day by a customer service representative who was pretty unhappy with the chargeback and threatened me with cancelling my account. Exactly what I wanted - problem solved!
Dumb article.
Too bad as well, affiliate programs could be a much better way to monetize than advertising revenue.
Yeah, that was my initial thought too, but thinking about it more, I understand why that doesn't exist.
Merchants are the ones paying the affiliate platforms, so the affiliate platforms don't have incentive to create features designed to increase power of the affiliates at the expense of the merchant.
Affiliates in this space don't seem to be very discriminating. The only communities I've found for keto affiliate marketers are the groups run by the merchants themselves, so it's not like they're searching for information about which merchants are honest or not. I think the general trend is to try a merchant, monitor how much they pay you, then move on if the dollar amount is too low.
(1) Why was all of this work worth $88 in the first place? As a talented writer who is at least presumably familiar with software engineering, he surely could have earned that money faster by other means.
(2) Why does he continue to work with merchants he himself describes as unscrupulous, in _affiliate marketing_?
My hunch is that he wrote this article specifically to appeal to the HN crowd (see patio11 quotes) in an attempt to get additional commissions from driving more sales to a vendor _he himself_ describes as unscrupulous.
Do better, HN.
He probably also wanted to burn the vendor/warn others.
Re #2: He didn’t. He states he ceased working with them after he recovered the $88.
He actually sells a course on it! - Hit the Front Page of Hacker News [0]
[0] - https://gumroad.com/l/htfphn/hacker
He has spent a few years building small one man startup type projects. His blog is quite obviously a way of generating initial interest in these projects.
He specifically notes that he has ended all relationship the affiliate so your baseless conspiracy theory is unnecessary.
Do better, clacsam.
The #1 rule of affiliate programs is to treat affiliates like royalty. Or more accurately - business partners. Be clear about what you offer, be generous, and always resolve reasonable misunderstandings in their favor. A single good affiliate can make your business. A bad reputation will destroy it.
There are third party affiliate software systems that can help with trust, but they are all terrible. Nothing substitutes for just being trustworthy. This post is probably going to be top news in the "keto affiliate community" (which, even without checking, I already know to be a thing) and it will be a problem.
I go out of my way, with link strippers, cookie removers, adblockers, to the point of often manually copy and pasting links into a private window if necessary, to avoid affiliate links. When I do this I usually feel like I'm supporting the online store, but there are some cases (e.g. I'm looking for an oversized mattress) where I know the whole industry is corrupt and I just want to pay as little rent as possible.
With both of these services, you get to collect the affiliate fee. Some things like insurance are huge and you can easily get £100 for them, most are much smaller.
1. https://www.topcashback.co.uk/ref/aembleton
2. https://www.quidco.com/raf/23003/
Lucky I'm not in the UK :)
Keep in mind though that affiliate programs are not necessarily sleazy. By default nobody knows about your product. Some of our partners have been making tutorials in other languages and building API integrations into their products. They deserve the money we send them.
Affiliate systems are the marketing equivalent of gig work. The quality of both product and affiliate are quite variable, but a good product and good affiliate are a strong net positive for society. Again, to use my case as an example, we have API integrations that we wouldn't have otherwise had and video tutorials in languages that we don't speak. Our customers love our product, I'm not ashamed to reward them for talking about it.
If you think every product should sell itself by 100% organic word of mouth... well, that's the rare exception, not the rule. If you're trying to build a business this way, you're in for a rough time.
You didn’t do any of that. You are just a customer at best and don’t provide any additional value on top of the money you pay for the product. Charging less then is just the company shorting itself for a single customer.
I may not be able to stop that, but I certainly don't want to support it.
The incentives of affiliates and principals aren't as fully aligned as might be hoped.
You trying to cut them out. I don't think it's in the sites best interest to offer people like you (cookie killers),a discount. If the affilates find out and they feel cheated they will move on.
Remember the affilate never gives one person at 20% (if they do they never hit their minimum) they give dozen/hundreds/thousands of customers.
EX: Grubhub chnaginging Yelp phone numbers to get an affiliate commission on people looking up a restaurants phone number.
Obviously I’m not getting the exposure of shareasale, impact, etc from being on their platform, but I can still sign up for them once I’ve validated that affiliate works for high ticket item hardware.
I've been in the digital and affiliate space for well over a decade and have run programs from the tiny to the massive. Platforms like Impact, SAS and others are great, but if you're looking to get started and don't want to break the bank, let me know. It isn't a business, just a super simple platform for running a program that I built for my own use and could easily be used by others.
[0] https://zlipa.com
If you're trying to get professional affiliates to market your business, sure, use third party software. Most the affiliates know the systems already and have some level of trust in it. Plus the software will provide analytics, payouts to various countries, tax guidance, etc.
Our program is primarily a referral program for existing customers. There's no separate affiliate account and credits automatically offset the fees we charge. Plus I like Stripe and don't want a bunch of third-party PHP crapware invading our already complex billing system. DIY was really the only option.
The things that make our customers want to refer others are not necessarily what will work for anyone else. Our current referral system would never fly with the porn affiliates, but also an impersonal "make $ fast!" affiliate system would never resonate with our customers.
A basic referral tracking system is super easy. Give users links they can share; clicking on the link puts a value in local storage; pass that value along with signups. Offer something meaningful to new customers who come in through a referral (for us, it's a discounted first month). If you're just trying to increase word of mouth spread, that's enough to get started.
The whole long story behind the dispute may be interesting for the writer of the story, but not in general. And those with long history, or institutional history by now the N+1th version of yet another dispute is not inherently interesting.
What is interesting is the OP's link may have discovered new area in the solution space. So please talk about that!
Well there goes your leverage. Is this common in the content game?
That data also comes from the vendor, so it's only as correct as the vendor wants it to be. Affiliates are always at the mercy of their vendors.
I've never known an affiliate system to have independently verified stats. Whether you're an affiliate for a small business or Amazon, they control the stats and you just have to accept what they say they owe you.
>The site has grown steadily over time, to the point where it now has over 100,000 pageviews per month.
As mentioned in the post, he has cut the affiliate program off. And given that he is naming & shaming them in the blog, and even after getting posted to HN, I think that relationship has soured.
In another country, like the one I now live in, this would be a job for law enforcement.
You'd just hand over your files to some branch of the government, and in a surprisingly short amount of time, you'd get some money, but also, the site would stop cheating people.
Except that this rarely happens here, because companies know that law enforcement cares about systematic scams.
They might try to cheat you once, to see if you're a sucker, but if you put up any fuss, they'll give you the money.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23862316
Based on the fact that I have also lived there, and looking at his comment history, I don’t think you can take this comment as being entirely accurate.
I'm confident I could probably recover most, but at this amount, I just don't want to deal with it. It's one of those cases where I wish I had a personal assistant. It makes me think there's room for a "consumer debt collector" service with a revenue share model.
There are various only services who go to court for you and will get as much money as they can. You go to their website, enter your flight, they calculate the probability that it was the airlines fault , they show you what you maybe can expect, you give them the permission and then they do everything else. The company takes something like 25% comission and that‘s it. It takes a few minutes. In the end she payed 100-200€ for the return flight and got something like 350€ back via the company.
Made me think if one could find the most unreliable flights, with the worst delay in case of a delay and fly them profitably by going to court all the time.
There was a company called Service that kind of did this. They launched around 2015. You would tell them about a customer service dispute you were having, and they would call the business on your behalf and recover the money you were owed. I used them several times, and they were able to recover money for me without me having to do much except give them the details.
It looked like they had a few million in VC money to blow through because it was free, and there were no minimums on the dispute amount, so it definitely couldn't last. In Feb 2017, they added a 30% commission on recovered money,[0] and then later that year, they pivoted to focus exclusively on disputes with airlines,[1] which it looks like they're still doing.[2]
[0] https://us11.campaign-archive.com/?u=8cdf4d62d0219f237ed96d7...
[1] https://mailchi.mp/dcc5d15901c4/meet-service-20
[2] https://www.getservice.com/
This make it very valuable to me. Resolving disputes can quickly become stressful, especially when as an engineer you rarely have to do so with customers.
https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-r...
The attitude is more like “you should feel lucky we let you give us your money and purchase something from us. Now fuck off.”
I tried the professional attitude, I tried threatening legal action (I have legal insurance that would pay an obscene amount of lawyer fees if it came to that), I have tried the angry consumer, I have tried to complain to the regulator... None of that worked. Most of the time, they basically say something like “kiss my ass”
I don’t know how to deal with EU companies. I was always getting what I wanted in North America by using the organized professional method. I’m at a complete loss in Europe. Any advice?
It's always "small" amounts like 50-500$, i.e. amounts that it sucks throwing out the window but that aren't big enough to justify sinking even more time in chasing.
I also don't believe this can be the only way. Most people don't have legal insurance and wouldn't pay a lawyer the equivalent of 1000$ for a dispute like that.
I'm talking every day stuff: a cellphone bill with an error on it (in the company's favour, always), or an Ikea piece of furniture that was delivered broken (but the package looked fine), or a voucher you were promised if you signed up for a particular health insurance plan and when it's time to get the voucher you're not eligible anymore... That kind of stuff.
I've also tried charging back on my Swiss card once... What a mission. I was treated the same way any other store treats me: download this PDF, print it out, fill it in (5 pages), send it in the mail, wait 3 weeks, never hear back.
Compared to my North American cards: one phone call and the dispute is open. Wait a month and get the credit. End of story.
Or for cell phone issues in NA: try calling once, get nowhere, tell the regulator with time of call and name of the person, a week later get a call from the "VIP" service at the telco who will basically give me whatever I want to make the complaint go away.
There are no regulators with that kind of power that I know of here. All of the "regulators" have no teeth, and so the businesses don't fear them.
If this happens to you a lot, go for a credit card. "Chargeback" works worldwide (afaik) and it puts you in the position of power, where merchant has to prove that you are in the wrong instead of the other way around. Simple solution and no real drawback.
EDIT: ...and change your CC company. They seem incompetent.
Also, consumer protection is nice on paper, but especially for smaller amounts of money or not-so-clear cases it doesn't work well. You still have to get a lawyer and go to court. Also, since there are no class-action suits US-style, where companies seem to be somewhat afraid of getting sued, in Europe they rely on the statistics of most people being too lazy to sue, because everyone has to sue one-by-one for themselves only. Only rarely, for high-profile stuff, consumer protection offices get involved with class-style (but fairly toothless usually) suits.
Another option that can work is to send a bill for the owed amount and if they fail to respond start the process of debt collection (Betreibung). It’s a pain and doesn’t work well for people who actually cannot pay, but for regular businesses where you’re stuck somewhere in their bureaucracy it’s a way to force them to respond to your claims that’s a bit less involved than straight-out suing them.
This still requires some amount of time from you and the small filing fees, the way I would calculate is whether I can earn more in that half day I spend in court and is my documented evidence clear and simple enough that i have an high probability of success.
The judges in such courts are usually impatient - they have ton of cases in their the docket, concise and simple presentation of facts and no opinions etc goes a long way, they also know you are not a lawyer so there is always some latitude for the plaintiff that usually you don't find in other places
Also your ability to sue in small claims court depends on jurisdiction, i.e. if you have any forced arbitration clauses in your contract and whether the jurisdiction has exceptions for small claims despite such clauses etc.
In the past I've had disputes where I've made tens of phone calls to customer support people who cannot solve the problem but pretend they will. Every call is groundhog day.
Now, if the problem isn't solved by the first phone call I write a letter.
A short paragraph (one or two sentences) describing what happened and why it is a problem. A short paragraph describing what I want. Then all the tedious detail. And conclude by restating the problem and what I want. No threats.
It hasn't failed yet.
In general: You have to find a weak spot. I have problems with a scam (ongoing) in an East European EU country and I have been trying to get the authorities for 6 months to act. Even hiring a lawyer has been extraordinary difficult. Most don't reply Emails, others charge exorbitant fees, our last lawyer is MIA so we are trying now with a lawyer that is listed on an embassy website. We are talking here about a loss of a mid 5 figure sum.
After nothing worked, I listened to the advice of a local friend and started to expose people from the government/police that do not act online. Very bold, very nasty, very below the waistline. But now it looks like I finally bombed them to the negotiation table. :-)
I'm in the UK, and made my first ever charge back a couple of months back, after Ryanair refused to refund a flight that was cancelled due to corona virus (we'd booked it before the pandemic started). I'd paid with my CC (a UK card; not sure why it would be any different with a US CC?). I forget the exact sum, but it was something like £1,500.
Ryanair completely took the piss - they were very clearly trying to hold on to everyone's money for the duration, and ignored communications or offered ridiculous, short-lived credit notes in lieu of a refund. Several months passed like this.
Eventually I read up on how charge backs worked and called my card provider. They sent a form, and within a couple of weeks, the money was back in my account - the whole process was really straightforward, and I fully recommend using it if a vendor is outright refusing to uphold their side of the bargain.
Nevertheless I don't abuse this. I only request a charge back if I assume I also would win a lawsuit. But nobody has ever challenged one of my charge backs in court.
Definitely agree. I'm pushing 40, and this is the first time I've done it. When I talked with friends and colleagues about this (from in the UK, but also from around Europe), I don't think a single person even knew what chargebacks were.
But I don't think I've ever once been in this kind of situation where my hand was forced - companies in Europe generally do the right thing, or at least behave within the boundaries of the law.
What is also very stupid since they don't lose only the money but also very likely a customer.
It also has to be considered that shrinking their market share is viable if it allows the company to survive.
Especially in Eastern Europe, they might be the only airline with direct flights between smaller cities and Western Europe[1]. There's no way I'm choosing Lufthansa and changing flights in Munich if I can go direct with Ryanair and save 3+ hours.
I've wondered if I show up as this type of customer to Ryanair, since there have been a couple of times when it's been within their terms for them to charge me (e.g. slightly overweight luggage, lost boarding pass) and they haven't.
[1] Destinations from London Luton, almost entirely Ryanair and similar budget airlines -- zoom in to ~Slovakia: https://www.flightconnections.com/flights-from-london-luton-...
Not only price. We've flown previously with Ryanair numerous times, and I don't think price was ever the deciding factor - they simply fly to a lot of European destinations, so for us it's meant shorter routes.
They've completely lost my trust after this debacle though - their illegal behaviour had been utterly shameful, and I'll go out of my way not to use them in future.
This is what charge backs are for. It is not my duty to invest time, nerves and potentially even pay interest for this.
really really doubt that you even tried. In mainland europe you just needed to fill a form, after a month you would have your money back.
I sent numerous emails, filled in maybe 6 forms, and multiple times had their understaffed online chat system open for up to 8 hours trying to speak to someone - for all the good it did when they answered.
Here in the UK, at the start, yes, Ryanair asked you to fill in a form, and said they would issue refunds within 14 days. I, like several thousand of others, duely filled in the form - only for Ryanair to change their tune a couple of weeks later. My guess was they'd sought legal advice, and found some loophole they thought would allow them to get away with it.
They went several weeks at a time with no general customer communications, and weren't replying to emails - on the rare occasions they did, it was to say they'd process refunds "later". Some weeks later, they sent out a general customer email, saying they'd only be issuing (short-lived!) credit notes instead of refunds, and anyone who declined would have to apply again, and would then have to wait until the pandemic was over for a refund. This whole (illegal!) debacle was very widely reported in the British media.
In my experience, this has stopped working so well in the last few years with companies tending to call customers' bluffs.
In most cases the best solution is: stop giving them money and go to the competitor.
Don't threaten legal action unless you already plan to follow it through: companies know this is unlikely to be followed up and will stonewall you.
If the industry has an ineffective regulator/ombudsman then going to a competitor might not help. In that case, I'd write a polite letter to your national member of parliament. (They are more likely to make this go away by fixing your personal problem, not instigating industry changes, so write with that in mind)
You actually do have to follow through if you're going to play that game. Otherwise almost everyone is just going to call your bluff, and I'm reasonably sure CS reps are now being actively trained to do so immediately at many companies. For example, any implication that you'd like to close an account or cancel an order will just be met with "I can do that for you immediately if you like", and if you don't take them up on it then they know you're not serious and you've lost any sort of credibility or leverage you might have had.
So, actually follow through. In the UK, suppose you have a legitimate grievance but get messed around by customer services, who may of course be incentivised to do exactly that. You may get better results by desisting from dealing with CS reps and instead sending a letter with verified delivery to the company's registered address. Clearly set out your grievance, what you would like them to do about it, and a reasonable amount of time you will allow for that to happen. Also include everything necessary for it to constitute a letter before action, which is the first step to a formal small claims action here, and possibly give a simple, objective statement in your letter that unfortunately if the matter is not resolved amicably by your stated deadline then you will proceed with that action.
IME, at that point your case may well be transferred to someone who actually knows the law and will be able to see if they have actually broken it or have obligations under it. And if they do, they'll know that it's in their best interests to resolve the matter quickly and agreeably if possible, and you may well get a response proposing some reasonable resolution (or saying that they'll stop chasing you if they've been hassling you after making a mistake).
If they don't do that, then actually bring the small claims action. This is designed to be accessible to normal people without requiring big expenses and professional lawyers. A lot of companies will apparently just not show up and let you win by default in that case, and you'll get some reasonable compensation for whatever wrong they've done to you. And if they do show up and you have a reasonable grievance, there's still a fair chance you'll win reasonable compensation accordingly.
The hard part isn't winning - which is easy if you have even a minimally credible case - it's enforcement.
If the company ignores the judgement you have to go back to court to get an enforcement order. And then you'll have to engage a collections company and/or a bailiff. And if they seize goods to the value of because they can't extract a payment, you won't be paid until the goods are auctioned off.
To a company turning over millions, a one-off claim for a few hundred is barely worth noticing. From their POV you're barely a flea bite, and of course most people will give up on a claim without much of a fight. So naturally they're going to try that first.
The other point is that most people you deal with don't care either way. They'll follow the company script, because the outcome - and your inconvenience - mean nothing to them.
As for enforcement, here, you're allowed to sell the debt the company owes you to collectors, and this pays 10% interest a year--not bad compared to a checking account. You can demand they show up in court again and answer to the judge why they haven't paid, and when they will, you can lay claim to rent and assets, et cetera. The court won't do that for you, but it very much does want to help legitimately harmed parties settle their score.
I agree it's not fast, though.
Then once again you just have to actually follow through. Obviously a business can't just decide to ignore a court ruling against it and get away with it if you take steps to enforce. And if you don't want to, there are professional organisations who are experts in the relevant law and will act as your agent and take enforcement action of the appropriate type for your case.
The repair tech sympathetically said that he was trying, but their policy at the time said the interference was at acceptable levels for voice and he wasn’t able to convince his management to trace the problem upstream and replace the line to fix one rural customer’s service.
On his fourth trip out he slipped dad a post it note with a phone number. It was the state public utility commission. My dad called on Thursday.
That Saturday, the district manager knocks on our door. He informs us of how sorry the entire Bell family is for the trouble we’ve had, that they have teams tracing lines from the central office to our house and will have the problem identified and fixed by Sunday, and that we will receive a rather significant discount to our bill over the next year to help “make it right”. His only ask was that we call the PSC and let them know if AT&T had solved the problem to our satisfaction.
- A promised warranty being fulfilled
- A battle of attrition until Macy's gave in
I'm sure there are more nuanced options also but I'm not going to take the time to guess each one as frankly I'm just not quite sure what the definition of Customer Service should be from this post. Should we focus on "The device was used to its limits and still replaced"? That Macy's actually honored a guarantee?
I have a very dour view on customer service since my particular line of work is B2B with IT professionals and it's rarely a pleasant experience with many regions, with the US (yes, nationally) and the UK (yes, basically all of it) being some of the most challenging customers to deal with simply because of their expectations and definitions of Customer Service.
The majority of the time they're not even aware of the terms of their support contract and constantly are pushing the boundaries of support or from the get-go are just far beyond anything that should be reasonably expected, and the amount of complaining and legal threats really takes an emotional toll on my team (since a lot of them do really want to help).
With the EU clients, the same boundary pushing happens, but I find there's usually much more of an honesty about it. Usually one of three things comes from our EU clients:
- The client openly admits they know we don't provide support for said thing, but they really have no other source for help
- The client honestly tells they had no idea we didn't provide support for such things, and humbly asks if there's anything we can offer to help out
- The client honestly had no idea we didn't provide support for such things, and closes out the case of their own volition
I'm not sure that I can say which result has the best "customer experience" for my clients, as in each case they don't get what they expected from the case they open. US/UK clients tend to add a 4th option:
- The client doesn't care what is/is not supported, they want a resolution
I can easily say which of the 4 outcomes is the most time consuming and emotionally draining for everyone involved.
I think that the idea of service is really misunderstood; service workers are not slaves, and while management __should__ work to make them do their job and honor the business' obligations, management also needs to help clearly define the boundaries of such obligations and explain how to gracefully deescalate situations that toe or exceed these boundaries.
The customer service was simply repeating the same thing over and over: accounting says the money was sent. What aggravated the issue, was that basicly every email was replied by a different customer service agent. I pointed out to them that according to SEPA regulations it is the sender's responsibility to ensure that the funds reach the recipient, but they were ignoring it. I didn't think to ask to be forwarded to the legal compliance office. I did take legal action, sort of, by complaining through the EU out-of-court dispute resolution platform, but didn't receive any response through the platform (might have helped anyway, don't know).
What helped resolve it, was looking up SEPA regulations (because until then I was saying "this is your responsibility", they were replying "no it's not"), endurance, and a sense of humour.
If that doesn't fix the problem you then make use of their complaints process. This is hard because they usually hide it away somewhere. But they all have one. It's best to do this using real letters in the post, because you might need this paperwork later. Grind through it until you get a final answer.
If that didn't fix it you have a choice. For regulated industries you can go to the regulator for advice. Or you can start a legal process.
For the regulator send a letter using whatever weird webform they use. Make sure you mention that you've already exhausted the company's own dispute resolution process. Some regulators are better than others - often you won't get much satisfaction from regulators.
Send a letter before action. This describes what went wrong and what you want them to do to put it right. Give them the timeline of how you've tried to fix it. Give them reasonable time limits to fix it. Then issue small claims proceedings.
Which country are you talking about specifically?
Just the other day there was judgment in a case against Vodafone (a mobile carrier) where callcenters faked the voices on the call to get a provision and the customer should pay for something he never wanted. If you live in Germany, the Verbraucherzentrale (consumer advice centre) can help you resolve issues like this.